Administrative Leave

Ivanov Reyez

While I waited for the train amid stares, I kept reading the administrative orders as though they were a certificate of completion. My joy warmed me against the chilly air starting to blow. It was August and my short-sleeved khaki shirt, my khaki uniform, was properly meant for summer. But this was Germany, and I should have worn a coat. My train would not leave until 11:10 A.M. from platform 29, so as on previous explorations of the Hauptbahnhof I bought a Bananemilch and roamed the station, watching the travellers arriving and departing. Usually, I was drawn to the International Press kiosk where I browsed and bought the English newspapers. But this morning I stood near Gleis 12 and remembered that about three months ago I had arrived from Stuttgart. From Frankfurt Rhein Main the soldiers bound for Bavaria had been transported by Army bus to the Stuttgart Bahnhof. There, before the trains arrived, I suggested to a handful of soldiers that we explore the nearby streets and Fräuleins. We drank our first German beers (too sweet, I thought) at a small beer hall. We were harassed by drunks, their eyes and German wilder as they followed us outside. “Varmongers!” they shouted, their arms flailing. “Vat are you doing in Fietnam? Vat are you doing here?”

Or perhaps it was Gleis 13? On the train from Stuttgart we met a young German soldier, a PFC in grey uniform. Chain-smoking, he shared his delicious salami sandwiches and beer with us. He asked for a Playboy. “We can’t get any here,” he said. Some American soldiers got off in Augsburg. I was probably the only one left for the last stop: the München Hauptbahnhof. It was near dawn when I got off the train in the bluish-grey cavernous station. I was sleepy and exhausted. As soon as I stepped onto the Bahnhofsteig a stocky blonde woman accosted me. Her painted face in the macabre light, her demanding accent, the smell of steel and rust, and the strangeness of the entire cold place intimidated me. I saw no one to pick me up, to liberate me from the woman pulling my arm and insisting on a hotel or an alley. Finally, two soldiers in grey flight jackets were coming towards us, all business in the surrounding greyness. “Where’s your duffel bag?” one asked, after having verified my name and saying they were the CQ. “Someone took it in Frankfurt,” I said, feeling dumb. “By mistake, I guess.” They drove me in a jeep out of Munich to a bombed-out building in the forest, the Schleissheimer Flugplatz, my home company.

Most of the summer, I had pressured everyone from the commanding officer to the lowest Orderly Room clerk to process my paperwork for Officer Candidate School. I had wanted to be an Army officer since my arrival in West Germany last May. Instead of enjoying the country like a tourist, I was already aching to rotate back to the States. Fortunately, the First Sergeant did not kick me out of the Orderly Room every time I appeared after work. Instead of eating supper, I was checking on my paperwork. When could I take my OCS physical? What was the mighty holdup? I was also fortunate that my motor-pool sergeant did not reprimand me for taking long lunch periods. He knew I was in the Orderly Room. Every day, sometimes an hour or so late, I would saunter across an island of grass and pine trees into the humming motor pool to continue dreaming. I did not feel obligated to explain myself to the dispatcher and the mechanics, to apologize for my ambition. I was greater than my tool-van job. A second lieutenant would have explained his actions to his experienced, crusty sergeants. Perhaps my attitude indicated the sort of officer I would become: the dictator to be followed, not the leader to lead. All in all, I was tolerated; and whether or not I was judged naive and foolish, they were doing my bidding. My comrades, who wisely did not mistake passion for substance, wondered if I was truly officer material. I treated my brass, my uniform and boots, my bunk and lockers, et cetera, as NCO concerns. I spoke of battlefield heroism and political power. I acted like an idealistic monk who rants about reforming the world while leaving the others to tend to the courtyard roses. By mid-August I had already taken my physical at the airfield clinic. The head OR clerk had expedited the paperwork. Never had he bitched openly. I learned to respect the pale freckles on his agitated rabbit face. A black paramedic, whether to harass me or he was truly another Army MOS blunder, had asked me which vein was the proper one for drawing blood. Needles frightened me. I did not need to hear such crap. “Man, if you don’t know, I don’t know either. Get someone else.” He felt my arm, as if selecting a tomato, smiled and drew my blood. The doctor who had done my physical was proud that I wanted to be an officer, one of them. He too had been politely rushed. The Vietnam War was raging, mostly as a romantic notion in me. Infantry OCS did not mean the brutal training, the jungles of Vietnam and death. It meant getting a two-week furlough after graduation, time to pursue a special girl back home. During orientation week in Ft. Polk, Louisiana, we took a battery of tests. Curses and intimidation, lack of sleep, and fatigue while standing in the January rain, seemed the only things those tests could measure. But a corporal with a clipboard called us out of the barracks one weekend. First, we were angry at being disturbed after an exhausting week. Then we were afraid: anonymity in basic training was the best way to survive. He read several names, including mine, from a roster. Because of our high GT scores, whatever that meant, we had been selected to take the OCT. He then marched us to another building for testing. How proud we felt: potential officers in the U.S. Army. Bars, not stripes; civilian apartments, not barracks. But the scores reduced the number of the chosen. My high-school nemesis—math, mathematics—had defeated me again. I felt humiliated, worthless, false. Nonetheless, hope raised its eternal head: the exam could be retaken one more time. I could remedy the one or two measly points that had flunked me. Life seemed predicated on a solid knowledge of math. Flunking high-school geometry twice had depressed me, and now the Army echoed Plato in its insistence on math. Could I enter the OCS gates? Would I be a worthy latecomer to this early dance? A modern officer needed to calculate, to employ the cold elegance of numbers to defeat the enemy.

So I secured an administrative leave: the OCT, the math section, was being administered in Augsburg. Again my paperwork was typed and signed expeditiously. No one questioned my abilities, though the knowledge I was retaking the exam slightly disappointed the head OR clerk and the First Sergeant. A few buddies thought I was taking the exam for the first time. I did not enlighten them. I merely kept pushing, my willpower angrily supporting my pride, knowing there was no third opportunity if I flunked or missed the exam. The duty driver took me to the Munich Hauptbahnhof. No soldier was allowed, especially on administrative leave, to ride the Strassenbahn and go downtown in uniform. I was happily armed with permission to leave my work post, my company, and take the coveted exam.

I bought a Life magazine, which had an article on the Roman Empire, and headed for platform 29. The platform was outside the station in the mild sun. The cars were cream and blue, like the streetcars. Since my ticket was Zweiter Klasse, I asked a train official in a shabby uniform for the right car. He pointed and I climbed in. The leatherette seats were burnt orange, maroon in the shade, fairly comfortable. A young woman in a black shirt (like an undershirt), faded jeans and black “granny” boots, sat across from me. She looked haggard: I imagined a hotel room with a vigorous lover, too many drinks and cigarettes, no breakfast. She tossed her mane of brown hair in front of her, then captured it with a bumblebee-colored band behind her. She pulled a magazine out of her leather bag; she tried reading, but her yawning and tears overwhelmed her. A whistle blew. Something was announced in German. There was a sudden tug and jolt and we left the station. A man in a dark blue uniform punched our tickets. I looked out the window at the excessive network of wires and cables, at the rails and the grey rocks resembling piles of corpses, at the oily brown rocks resembling Brazil nuts. We passed little towns or villages with orange-roofed houses that resembled barracks. The evergreens were straight as soldiers in formation, and I wondered what kind they were. Red-orange, yellow and lavender wildflowers grew beautifully in fields everywhere. The abundant greenery reminded me of the popular photos of Ireland. Two grey-haired women sat across the aisle. One stared plaintively out the window. This is the country you grew old in, I thought. Where were you in 1939? The other woman read the Munich newspaper. Her fingers were almost black when she finished. She went to the WC located between cars. I felt that the girl facing me expected conversation. I found her boring, stale. I got up and inadvertently wandered into the next car, obviously first-class or reservation compartments. I stood in the corridor staring out of the windows. I was pensive, abstracted, perhaps too sensitive to be an effective officer, especially on the battlefield. The rhythm of the tracks, the countryside, the very things not to dwell on entranced me. I felt alone despite some young people wandering up and down the corridor, curiously staring at my uniform, speaking not in German. Going in and out of their compartments, they were restless as the school children with satchels. Presently, four fellows approached me, their eyes on my uniform. One of them pointed to my PFC stripe and asked, “Are you sergeant?” “No, I’m just a private first class,” I said, embarrassed. “One stripe.” “And sergeant?” “Three stripes,” I said, raising three fingers. “A corporal has two.” There were questions about my crests, my 7th Army patch, and my marksman rifle badge. They had never seen an American soldier in the flesh. In their country, which they said was Yugoslavia, American soldiers were perhaps romanticized as relentless fighting machines; or perhaps their propaganda depicted them as “imperialist warmongers” aiming to westernize Southeast Asian eyes. “We are drama students,” said the most articulate fellow, placing his hand on his chest. “We are going to Frankfurt and Berlin. Both sides of Berlin. Then on to other cities.” “You’re going to have a lot of fun, it seems. New experiences.” “I hope, but train, this train has nothing to do.” “This is my second trip on a German train, on any train,” I said, vaguely recalling being in my mother’s arms and looking out of a train window at cacti or magueys. “I like it.” “I want to tell you a secret,” said the fellow, lowering his voice and looking around. “We really like Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare—” “Not just Brecht,” said another fellow. “We just don’t talk about it,” said the articulate fellow. “We like also American big cars and rock-and-roll.” He looked at his friends. “How’s Johnson?” he suddenly asked me. “How’s Tito,” I retorted. He was startled, perhaps surprised that I knew his leader’s name. Two girls approached us before he could answer. They were brown-haired, pretty and tan in an athletic way. “Damir,” they called him. After they exchanged a few words, Damir invited me to join them in their compartment. I followed them, feeling slightly distrustful. We sat down and Damir asked me if I liked Europe. “Very much,” I said. “I had always dreamed of travelling here.” “Then you must come to Dubrovnik on the beautiful Adriatic coast. It’s very historical.” “Du-brov-nik. Am I saying it right?” “You are always welcome to stop by,” he said. “Let’s sing,” said one of the girls. She started singing in their language and clapping. Everyone joined her. Their knees were bouncing, their bodies swaying. Everyone was smiling and I was amazed. “How do you say ‘songs’ in your language?” I asked Damir. He said something. “What?” “P-j-e-s-m-e. Pjesme.” “You like bee-tals?” a girl asked me. “Beetles?” “Yes, bee-tals, bee-tals,” the other girl said. “She loves you, yea, yea, yea.” “Oh, the Beatles. Yeah, I like them very much.” Then we sing for you,” she said. They broke into “Nowhere Man,” “Help!” and other hits by the Beatles. The girls’ English pronunciation was almost comical. I was surprised, delighted, entertained. After I left the drama students, walking along the corridor towards the second-class car, I spotted a girl alone in a compartment. She sat rigidly in the middle of the seat, equidistant from the window and the door. She was looking downward, almost timidly, as if someone were sitting across from her. Perhaps this was her first trip alone. I reached the end of the corridor and thought about this opportunity. I turned back, swaying with the train, my body aroused. This time the girl was on the edge of her seat. I stopped. She raised her head slowly and turning to her left, saw me through the glass door. There were empty compartments down the corridor, but I decided to enter hers. I sat across from her, nervously admiring her robust beauty. Again she was looking downward. She was clearly not a city girl. Her skirt was somewhat folksy, regional, with red and green flowers. Her white blouse, buttoned at the throat, resembled a Russian peasant shirt. I indifferently opened my Life magazine: Roman might was not greater than fresh Bavarian beauty. Her hair was auburn, frizzy, almost shoulder-length, with a few strands dangling seductively about the temples. Her skin was pinkish pale, a healthy rose petal. Her hands and wrists were thick; so were her ankles. I wanted to see her calves, but her skirt was too long. In this miniskirted age, she was like an Amish girl. How could I meet her? My German was quite limited. Perhaps she knew English. I lay the magazine and the orders beside me on the seat. “Do you know the name of those trees?” I asked, pointing to the dark green forest, an island in the midst of yellow-green fields. She looked up, her eyes greenish in the light, two or three moles on her cheeks. She shook her head and shrugged. “Fräulein, do you know the name of those trees?” I moved my hand up and down, as if demonstrating a judo chop. “Nahmeh. Trees.” “Fenster?” she asked. “Ich verstehe nicht.” She shrugged, frustrated. I sprang to the window, bent to look outside. Similar trees were nearer, majestic among other majestic trees. “Kommen Sie hier,” I said. She did not move. I took her hand, felt a slight resistance, and brought her to the window. She smelled like warm dust, grass in the wind, honeysuckle. Again I pointed at the trees. “See those trees? The evergreens.” Again my hand chopped the air, my forefinger delineating the trees. “What kind of trees are they?” “Wald?” she asked, still perplexed, her face glowing in the white light. I was probably the only GI in Germany or the world asking people about trees. I had done the same thing in Texas. In the Englischer Garten I had approached old ladies sitting alone on benches, watching the ducks and the swans, and asked them about trees. In Schwabing, from a sidewalk café, I had contemplated the frisky poplars on Leo-poldstrasse. When I strolled about, eating a banana or licking an Italian Eis, I asked passersby about other trees. I was sometimes treated suspiciously, though always politely. My finger continued tracing the trees, the islands of trees appearing and disappearing along with the orange-roofed housed. “We have those kinds of trees around the Flugplatz where I’m stationed, outside of Munich. It’s always nice to walk among them in the rain. Regnen. To touch them, to smell them.” “Blumen?” she asked. “Nein. Nein. Not Blumen, not flowers. I know Blumen.” I smiled. She was a Blümlein, a little flower. She probably stood no taller than five-two, but her frame looked sturdy. Despite my uniform, my being a soldier, I felt weak and pallid beside her. She could have led me anywhere. “Tanne,” she said, pointing. “Tan-ne,” I repeated. “Hmmm. Sounds romantic.” “Tannenbaum,” she said. “Tannenbaum. Just like the surname.” “Tannenbaum. Tannenwald.” “All those trees are Tannenbaum, Tannenwald?” I asked, my hand sweeping across the forest like a windshield wiper. “Tannenbäume,” she said. “All those trees are Tannenbäume? I’m asking because in English we have different evergreens—pines, firs, spruce—and I tend to confuse them.” She looked at me, smiling innocently, like a deaf person trying to read my lips. I noticed a tiny rooster embroidered between the last two buttons of her blouse. “Different. Like if you said roses, orchids, gardenias. Different, many kinds. Like brot, you have Semmeln, Isarthaler, and—” “Fichte,” she said. “Fich-te. Just like the German writer, the German philosopher.” “Kiefer,” she continued. “Kiefer?” “Ja. Kiefer.” “Okay, okay whatever that means.” We sat down together, on her side of the compartment. It was as though the trees, the rolling countryside, had wedded us. Her chartreuse eyes were spirited, her skin flushed. We were smiling at each other. I took off my saucer hat, which I considered clownish and impractical, and threw it on top of the orders and the magazine. “Your eyes have a lot of yellow,” I said. She squirmed. “I like your skirt.” Her eyes followed my hand feeling the sleeve of her blouse, then pinching the skirt over her left thigh. She leaned slightly away. “Tract,” she said. “Baumwolle — aus Österreich.” She was obviously referring to her outfit, but my interest had shifted from the white lace across her chest to the chest itself. I fingered a silver ID bracelet on her left wrist, trying to read her name. The only way to read the small letters was to get up and face her, or else break my neck. But I simply twisted both my head and the bracelet to read: Clem-menhilde? “Clemmenhilde?” I asked. She smiled, looking downward, uncomfortable with the growing intimacy. We sat tightly, shoulder to shoulder, as if packed in a small crate. I was glad to be with her. She had removed me from my ruminations, from the empty corridor where I stood like an exhausted sunflower. Here I was real, authentic, on the verge of creating a fact. To kiss or touch her was to transform an ordinary train trip into history. Years later, we would remember this August 1966 on the Zug to wherever. This was more important than heroism in Vietnam. Since we sat so intimately, I could focus on any part of her body and quiver and be overwhelmed. There was no need for modesty, for restraint: it was like shouting obscenities in the desert. If she felt my gaze like an anvil on her lap, I deliberately kept it there until she looked away. “I wish we could talk,” I said. “I want to know where you’re from, where you’re going. Do you understand?” She looked at me, a gripping look. “You’re so beautiful, so annihilating. Do you know that?” My arm started around her shoulders. When it landed, she tried to shrug it off. I removed it and caressed her soft, strong arms, greatly excited by her scattered moles. They were like tiny drops of chocolate dotting her milky skin. I gripped her left wrist. “Nein, nein,” she said. “You’re beautiful, beautiful, schön.” She moved her arms away. I tried to kiss her on the lips and she turned her face. I understood that neither a blitz nor a retreat would help my aim. So I subdued myself, but it was like trying to prevent a fruit from ripening. An occasional “Nein, nein,” punctuated my advances. When I tried to smell her neck, to kiss its ruddy porcelain, she would lean away without ever showing anger or changing seats. It never struck me that she could run out of the compartment to complain. I stared at her black shoes: how still they were, how innocent. The window was a white glare, as if a cloud had descended to peep. Eventually, through my sheer persistence and whatever was evolving within her, she permitted my arm to rest around her shoulders. She allowed me to kiss her pink cheeks and the red-gold hairs flaming on her neck. But whenever I strayed close to her lips, she averted her face and the window light ignited her pristine beauty even more. Once I managed to kiss the corner of her mouth. Tasting a trace of her saliva was magical, enough to convert me into a Kabbalist. For her I would have lain on my back with my mouth open to receive the nourishment of her spittle. My absorption in Clemmenhilde was such that any stop we might have made at a small-town Bahnhof went unnoticed. If there was stillness or swaying cars, passengers in the corridor, and whistles to announce departures, I had registered nothing. Our compartment was a sanctuary. That is, until the door slid open. We were startled. The ticket master or conductor, stocky and neckless in his dark blue uniform, asked for our tickets. I found mine in my back pocket. Clemmenhilde calmly pulled hers out of her shirt pocket. Snorting, the man returned Clemmenhilde’s ticket and held mine in his thick hand. He said something about “das Abteil” and “Zweite Klasse.” I did not understand all the German, but I already knew that I sat in a first- class compartment with a second-class Fahrkarte. His presence intimidated me; his impatient baritone German reminded me of the stereotypical Gestapo. Where was he in 1939? “Warten Sie,” Clemmenhilde suddenly interposed. They exchanged a few words and I understood that I needed to pay extra to remain in the compartment. She turned to me with the cool demeanor of a bank teller and explained what I knew. I took out some bills and coins and she picked the amount needed from my hand. She appeared elegant: I felt protected. “Sehr gut,” said the man. “Danke schön.” Clem-menhilde smiled and said “Bitte” as he walked out and closed the door. Alone again, we looked at each other. “Danke,” I said. “You’re beautiful, schön.” She smiled and the train rattled. What else could I say that she could understand? Her smile encouraged me and once again my arm rested on her shoulders. I buried my face in her auburn hair, smelled it, and licked the wispy hairs of her neck. She shuddered, her forearms sprouting goose pimples. I wanted to see her calves. I started to raise her skirt. “Nein, nein,” she began again. I tried to kiss her again: she kept denying me her lips. I returned to her skirt, the warm cotton, and little by little she was letting me raise it. I glanced towards the door. Then finally I saw her calves: they were lovely, beautifully thick, glaringly white. I gripped her left ankle to feel its thickness. Soon I was caressing her left calf and her knee. Occasionally, Clemmenhilde watched my hand. Despite my delirium, I felt the train stop at some Bahnhof. I looked out the window: there was a gaggle of school children with backpacks, a luggage cart with a mountain of suitcases and three Turkish-looking men guarding them and smoking nearby. I could not see the name of the station anywhere. I thought of running out to find the sign or to ask, but I could not wean myself from the delicious calves. So in Langweid, a later stop, it struck me that I had missed Augsburg. I was torn between panic and desire. What did the OTC mean? Ambition drove one forward, but for what? If I sought military glory in Vietnam, what was the value of this moment with Clemmenhilde? Obviously, the missed station attested to my lack of discipline and sense in the midst of distraction. Clemmenhilde turned to look at me. My arm on her shoulders was lighter, sliding off. I needed to return. They would know if I missed the test. I grabbed my hat. The next station meant absurdly trading pleasure for a tenuous goal. Thus I struggled to explain to Clemmenhilde that I had missed my stop and needed to get off. I showed her my orders. “It’s hard to leave you. I wish I could go to wherever you’re going.” I ached for whatever evolved along the way. She had been gradually responding to my touch, and the fact that she had not complained to the conductor proved I did not frighten her. “Donauwörth?” she asked. “Is that the next town? God, I would go with you all the way to Berlin.” The train rolled and occasionally I stretched my neck towards the window to catch a possible station. Clemmenhilde knew that she was no longer my focus, and the urgent melancholic tone in my words was serious. She was looking at me intently, not to utter “Nein” and contort her face. There was a genuine response, a mask of understanding. She seemed to ask why, to miss the anxious desire that I had exuded for her. Again I explained. Her concern, her splotchy throat, exacted from me a desperate precision of language and gesture. The train stopped: Donauwörth. I sprang to my feet and snatched my magazine and orders from the opposite seat. Clemmenhilde looked up at me, her eyes confused and imploring, “Please don’t go.” She grabbed my hand as I started to rush out. “Goodbye,” I quickly said, disengaging myself. “It’s time to go.” She darted after me to the door. I turned and fell to my knees and, with my hands gripping her calves as if for balance, kissed her deeply through her skirt. My hat fell off. I opened the door and ran down the corridor, adjusting my stupid hat, and jumped off the train before the whistle blew.

I stood on the railway platform like a zombie, frustrated and angry, silly in my uniform. I had smelled the cool ocean through the warm cotton of Clemmenhilde’s skirt: I gasped for more. She was staring at me, her face bright and plaintive against the compartment window, which reflected the station. A whistle blew and I shivered. The train jolted.